The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, March 16-22
Hatari! (1962)
Directed by Howard Hawks
The setup is classic Hawks: a band of men engage in dangerous, exotic physical labor. Here, it’s not driving cattle to Missouri, or flying mail through storms, but catching big game for zoos, on location in East Africa. And, as usual, a tough gal—or two, sort of—shows up and throws off their dynamic. It’s all dumb romance, immature jokes, (unconscious?) racism and a child’s sense of adventure—but you’d have to be made of stone not to smile at John Wayne wearing a bucket of goat’s milk on his head. And the Technicolor chases across the veldt are often thrilling—off the studio backlots, with real studio actors (especially Wayne) wrangling or tossing ropes at the majestic creatures of what’s now Tanzania: some harrowing (crocodile!), some thrilling (zebras!), some comic (ostriches!). It’s pure cinema of a kind that must have appealed to Godard (who considered this the best film of 1962—better than Jules and Jim!). Henry Mancini did the score; guess which piece of music made its debut? Henry Stewart (March 19, 5:45pm at the Metrograph’s salute to IB Technicolor)